Battery swapping and subscription start-up Mooving will invest close to $5 million in expanding its services to eight more cities within six months.
In a conversation with Mobility Outlook, Tanvir Singh, Co-founder, Mooving, noted that expansion in the southern region of India will be a key focus for the company. “We will start offering our services in Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, and more countries by the end of this fiscal,” he said.
Currently, the start-up is present in 25 cities, offering battery swap stations on a franchise model allowing individuals and institutions to set up battery swap stations in the combination of six, 12, 18, and 24 batteries. SolarCube, Singh's first start-up was acquired by Amplus, and later Petronas acquired Amplus in an INR 2,700 crore deal.
Mooving was incubated under the aegis of SAR Group’s E Mobility Platform. Interestingly, the group also operates a battery company Livguard, an electric two-wheeler OEM Lectrix, among several other brands.
Makings E2Ws Accessible
Mooving's biggest bet is making the electric two-wheeler (E2W) accessible across categories (B2B & B2C). It plans to enable electric vehicle OEMs to sell E2Ws without batteries. As of now, the majority of E2Ws sold in India are equipped with fixed batteries.
“E2Ws will become expensive once FAME subsidies end, and the increase in price might make this non-appealing to the end consumers. But if the electric scooters are sold without batteries their prices come down by almost 40 to 50%, resulting in increased chances of them getting adopted,” said Singh.
The start-up has already begun supplying batteries to several OEMs with which it has non-disclosure agreements. However, Singh mentioned that Lectrix is one of the OEMs it has already collaborated with. Interestingly, Mooving batteries are supplied to E2W OEMs at no cost. Instead, the start-up shares its revenue from its battery subscription and swap services with the OEMs.
Also Read: Honda’s Interesting Model Around EV Battery Swap Business In India
Singh explained, 'It is like building a circular economy for the E2W ecosystem. For the E2W category to be mass adopted in India, several partners will have to collaborate and make the segment appealing to the end consumer.' He believes that as service costs come down with time due to the ICE powertrain shifting to electric, the battery-swapping model will help the sales channel, especially the dealerships, in setting up additional sources of income.
He added, “If you look at the difference between the service costs of EVs and ICE two-wheelers, you will realise that with EV servicing, a source of revenue for dealers is diminishing. Battery swap stations can prove to be a game changer for them as well.”
B2B To B2C
While the company started as a 100% B2B battery swapping and subscription company, it now aims to spread its wings in the end-consumer (B2C) domain. “The majority of our consumers are from the B2B vertical but we are focusing more on the B2C at the moment,” Singh said.
This is because he sees a big jump in individuals investing in E2Ws for personal commuting needs. Additionally, the yet-to-be-introduced 'Battery Swapping Policy,' will prove to be a catalyst in the growth of this sector. Mooving also serves the electric three-wheeler OEMs with its battery swapping services.
The start-up's batteries are manufactured at the Livguard facilities in India. Its client base includes fleet operators and last-mile delivery companies like Zomato, Amazon and Flipkart.
According to data sourced from the Vahan portal, over a million electric vehicles were sold in India during the last fiscal, and the majority of these were two-and three-wheelers.
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